His knees sank into the stone pavement. It was cold. A chill that penetrated to the very core of his bones. Daichi couldn't even lift his face. At the edge of his vision, the black mouth of a drainage ditch loomed hazily. The marketplace's clamor echoed in the distance. Merchants' shouts, the creaking of carts, someone's laughter. Everything sounded muffled, as if heard from the bottom of water. Then, a shoe stopped in front of him. A small shoe. Leather, scuffed slightly at the toe. On the side of the right foot, some kind of stain—a blue-black smudge like magical circle ink. Daichi tried to raise his gaze. He couldn't. His neck had no strength. His stomach was hollow; his body, which hadn't eaten since yesterday, was honest about its condition. But the crystal in his shirt pocket grew faintly warm. Since he'd picked it up yesterday, it had been nothing but a transparent lump. Now it radiated a gentle warmth like body heat. As if saying, "I'm here." "...Um." A voice fell from above. A girl's voice. Hesitant, yet not fleeing. From that voice alone, Daichi sensed something different. "Are you alright?" Daichi slowly raised his face. Lustrous silver hair caught his eye. It fell to her shoulders, undulating softly. Beneath it, eyes of a clear blue-green color. Beautiful—but the left eye seemed to shimmer with a thin golden hue. Odd-eyed, Daichi thought vaguely. The moment their gazes met, the girl took a step back. Her feet were trembling. He understood that. Of course they were. In this world, what a being that looked like Daichi meant—the word "Abomination" and the weight of the stone thrown at him yesterday still lingered in his arm. But the girl didn't flee. Instead, she tried to lean in closer, taking a step forward. Just then. Daichi's body tilted forward. His strength gave out. His center of gravity collapsed, and he was about to tumble onto the stone pavement— "Whoa!?" The girl jumped back. She stumbled, catching herself on the pavement with her hands. Daichi managed to support himself with one arm, but he was practically crawling. Silence stretched for several seconds. "...For someone on death's door, you move awfully fast." The girl murmured, her voice half-exasperated. Daichi tried to smile wryly, but his facial muscles wouldn't obey. Still, he forced his mouth open. He'd been picking up Sele language gradually since yesterday. His grammar was messy, but he could say what he needed to, probably. "...I don't eat. You." The girl froze. Her face went blank. It took her three seconds to process the meaning. Then, unable to contain herself, she let out a small laugh. "I know you don't eat people." She spoke while suppressing her laughter. Her blue-green eyes were fixed on Daichi. This time, it wasn't just wariness—something else was mixed in. "Let's go. We stand out here." ————— The eaves of the abandoned workshop were dim. At the southern edge of the Havassa commercial district, deep in a quiet alley. The stone single-story building, ninety years old, had cracks running through its walls. The floor was whitened with dust, and cobwebs swayed in the corner of the ceiling. But it kept out the rain and wind. The girl led Daichi to a corner beneath the eaves and opened a small bag. "Can you eat this?" Dried fruit emerged. Fruit from this world, dried until its surface had shriveled to a deep crimson. Daichi took it and put it in his mouth. Sweet. Sour. It seeped slowly through his body. The girl popped one into her own mouth and sat down cross-legged. "Well, first..." After thinking for a moment, she spoke in a careful tone. "There's something called a 'protection petition.' It's a customary law valid throughout the Sele Federation—there's an 'Abomination Expulsion Decree,' and beings like you aren't officially permitted to be in the city. But if there's an arbitrator willing to accept a protection petition, temporary residency rights are granted." Daichi listened while watching the girl's face. She'd introduced herself earlier as a Spinemage apprentice. Her name was Lily. She wore a small, withering flower ornament in her hair, slightly askew. A faint magical circle pattern floated on the back of her hand, marking her as a "Spinemage"—a specialist who wove magical power into thread-like forms to imbue tools and buildings with magical effects. "Do I become the arbitrator, or do you?" "I do. I'll file the petition as your protector." Daichi fell silent. He wanted to ask why she'd go so far. But the girl pulled out documents first. Something like thin parchment. An inkwell and quill pen appeared as well. "I'll fill it out. Um, for the race field..." The girl's quill moved. "Abomination (but harmless)" Daichi leaned in to look at the written characters. "...Isn't that counterproductive?" "But it's accurate, isn't it?" She tilted her head. Her blue-green eyes were serious. That made it even funnier. "Being accurate is one thing. But the moment a clerk sees 'Abomination,' there's a high chance they'll turn you away at the door before reading the rest." "...That's certainly true." The girl frowned. She tapped the parchment with her pen tip. "Then what should I write?" "Traveler of unknown race, or something." "That would be lying, wouldn't it?" "Technically, what I'm classified as in this world is genuinely unknown. It's not a lie." The girl thought for a moment. She made a small sound. "...That might actually be accurate. A legal loophole, as they say." "Don't sound like you're enjoying this." "But I am." She smiled brightly. It was an innocent, carefree smile. She carefully crossed out "Abomination (but harmless)" and rewrote it as "Traveler of unknown race." Some ink stained her hand blue, but the girl didn't seem to mind. By the time the documents were finished, Daichi suddenly asked: "Why do you do so much for me? Everyone else is scared and runs away." The girl's hand stopped. Then, with a distant look, she smiled. "My master threw me out three days ago." "Huh?" "I burned three transfer circles in a row. One of them was for my master's important commission." She said it while smiling. Daichi wondered how she could say it with that expression. "That's...not something to brag about." "It's not bragging." "Then why are you smiling?" "Because I have no choice but to." The girl put away her quill as she spoke. Her tone of voice had changed slightly. Not the lightness from before, but something deeper. "The only time I can keep going after failing is when someone tells me I'm needed. I had that with my master. I don't have it now." Daichi couldn't say anything. Words wouldn't come. The girl didn't seem bothered by his silence and put the documents away in her bag. ————— Inside the abandoned workshop, it was slightly warmer than outside. The warmth the stone walls had absorbed during the day still lingered into the evening. Daichi and Lily sat on the floor, sharing the remaining dried fruit. Lily glanced at Daichi's bag. "That book isn't written in this world's characters." Daichi looked at his bag's opening. The spine of a food processing reference book peeked out. Japanese characters. Symbols that didn't exist in this world. "It's from where I came from." "What's written in it?" "How to make food. How to preserve it, how to process it." The girl's expression changed. "Preserve?" "Yeah. Food rots if you just leave it, right? But if you dry it, smoke it, ferment it—it lasts longer. The flavor changes too. Sometimes it gets better." Lily's blue-green eyes shifted. Different from the curiosity she'd shown before—like she was calculating something, but not just calculating. Like intuition had struck. "Fermentation...smoking...this city has almost no processed foods like that." "I know. I observed the market yesterday and figured it all out." "There's no selling in small portions either. No fixed prices." "Prices are negotiated every time, and there's no packaging." Daichi picked up one of the dried fruits. Come to think of it, this was processed food too. In the sense that it was dried. But in this world, it wasn't thought of that way—just as a preservation method, not systematized. "I want to go back. To my original world." He said it quietly. "But I don't know how to get back right now. So I have to stay here for a while. During that time, I want to do what I can." Lily was watching Daichi. Intently. Her gaze was slightly warm, which made Daichi a little uncomfortable. "Do you know the word 'convenience store'?" "Convenience store...?" The girl tilted her head. "Is it a type of small food storage container?" She said it completely seriously. Daichi was silent for a while. It wasn't quite that, but it wasn't entirely wrong either. "Well...it has some of those aspects." "It's a storage container's name, then?" "No. It sells lots of different things. In small portions, at fixed prices, open to anyone. You provide customer service, smiling. You say 'welcome' as they come in." "...Welcome means what?" "It means 'thank you for coming.' You say it to customers." The girl froze. "You say thank you to the customers...?" "Yeah." "Even though the customers are the ones paying money?" "Yeah." "...That's very strange." "In this world, it probably is." Daichi smiled wryly. But Lily's eyes had already moved past "strange." She was thinking. Intensely. Then Lily brought up the subject of his wounds. The arm where he'd been hit with stones yesterday still had redness. "Let me see a bit. I'm not good at healing, but I can at least disinfect it." "It's fine, it's not serious." "Even if it's not serious, infection is a problem. Show me." Her voice left no room for argument. Daichi reluctantly held out his arm. Lily leaned in close. Her silver hair swayed. She was quite close to examine it properly. Suddenly, Daichi looked into Lily's eyes. Blue-green. A clear, beautiful color. But the left eye—it had a thin golden tint mixed in. You could see it clearly in the daylight. The blue-green and gold seemed to blend together in a single iris. Something caught in Daichi's chest for just a moment. Something he couldn't quite put into words. But it was definitely there. It vanished when pain shot through his wound. "The disinfectant will sting." "Could you mention that before you do it?" "I just did." "You just did it!" Daichi couldn't help but shout. Lily looked up with a blank expression. "But you're fine. It's stinging properly." "The stinging itself is the problem!" "Feeling pain means you're alive. Let's think positively." "Aren't you just quoting something your master told you?" Lily went completely still for a moment. "...It is something I was told." She said it with a slightly embarrassed expression. Daichi thought "I knew it" but said nothing. "So what do we start with for the convenience store?" Lily looked confused. Then she burst out laughing from deep in her belly. "You said you wanted to go home!" "The desire to go home and the desire to be useful to someone in front of me can exist separately." Lily laughed for a while longer. While laughing, she wiped the corner of her eye with her finger. ————— The next morning. The sky was overcast, and Havassa's stone pavement was cool with night dew. It was before the market opened, and the commercial district's streets still had few people. In the distance, the sound of cart wheels rolling over stone echoed. The Merchant Council Hall—the self-governing organization that supervised commercial transactions in Havassa, established after the False Grain Rebellion seventy-eight years ago—stood on the north side of the central plaza. Three stories, walls of darkened stone. The window for issuing merchant certificates and the dispute mediation room were located here, Lily had said. The receptionist was a middle-aged beastfolk official. T